Boil water notice impacting Starkville residents and businesses

STARKVILLE, Miss. (WCBI) – That boil water notice has had a big impact on residents and businesses across Starkville.

Grocery stores have been swamped with people trying to stock up on beverages for themselves, and in some cases, others.

“Oh my gosh I got here at 6 o’clock, and it hasn’t stopped since 6 o’clock,” said Eileen Comer.

A city-wide boil water notice after Wednesday’s water outage has caused a different sort of outage on grocery shelves.

Employees at Vowell’s Market Place said their water jugs went first, but other beverages are quickly being sold.

“It’s water, Coke, tea, Sprite. The restaurants are coming out because they can’t use any of their water. I guess you can call it panic almost because they’re not just buying one there buying like six, ten carts full,” said Comer.

Local restaurants said it’s a challenge, but they still have to keep the drinks flowing.

“We’ve had to take time off to go buy the products bring them back change our pricing structure on different things, and it’s just a different animal that we had to do it today. We can’t make tea today because you know it’s made with water any of our Coca-Cola products from the fountain machines all of those are off today,” said Bart Wood.

There has also been a bigger concern – taking care of students across the city.

“We tweeted it out and texted it out this morning between the Starkville Academy and Starkville School district. You know if you can send your kid with a couple of bottles of water. I called Robert Clark this morning and asked him if there was some way he could help, and they are donating 2500 bottles of water to all the schools, in quantities of like 400 or 500 that kind of thing to the schools,” said Mayor Lynn Spruill.

Mayor Spruill said she understands people’s frustrations and is doing what she can to answer questions.

“I did what I normally try to do anytime we have something going on in the city, and this one was a massive deal. So I just dedicated myself all night to responding to those questions. I try next door, and on Facebook, and on the city’s website on, my Facebook page, and even on my property management website to get all those things out there so questions someone needs to answer them,” said Mayor Spruill.

Mayor Spruill said she will continue posting updates to social media and the city website.